


The People We Lost

by oceaneyesinla



Series: The Continuing Adventures of Alix and Nox [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Post-Game: Destiny 2: Forsaken DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26570548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaneyesinla/pseuds/oceaneyesinla
Summary: I am on a real 'I miss Cayde' kick, huh? I keep reading fantastic stories about Cayde, Andal, Shiro and Tevis and I made myself sad thinking about how their group just kept shrinking. So I wrote about that. I hope I did it justice, because I'm pretty damn proud of this one.I'm on tumblr (oceaneyesinla), please come ask me about Alix, if you want! Thanks for reading!
Relationships: Andal Brask/Cayde-6, Cayde-6/Female Guardian (Destiny)
Series: The Continuing Adventures of Alix and Nox [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922857
Kudos: 7





	The People We Lost

**Author's Note:**

> I am on a real 'I miss Cayde' kick, huh? I keep reading fantastic stories about Cayde, Andal, Shiro and Tevis and I made myself sad thinking about how their group just kept shrinking. So I wrote about that. I hope I did it justice, because I'm pretty damn proud of this one. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr (oceaneyesinla), please come ask me about Alix, if you want! Thanks for reading!

When she joined the pack, they were already a man down. Cayde has told her many a time that she had saved them; that they needed someone like her to remind them of what it meant to be a Hunter. No-one said it, but they were all thinking it - ‘we need someone like Andal.’ Once, the comparison had scared her. Now it inspired her to be better. She knew Andal's death had thrown them for a loop. Even after so long, she could see the effect it had on them. Once they let her in, once they really showed her the broken pieces, she made a silent promise to their fallen friend; she would look after them where he could not.

She smiled as she remembered the first time she met Tevis. He had looked her over for long enough that she was getting nervous, then just laughed and patted her shoulder before carrying on as if they'd known each other forever. As he left, he'd touched her shoulder again, this time giving her a soft smile

"Welcome to the pack, kid."

His words had meant so much at the time and they meant so much more now that the only piece of him she had left was the Light she had gathered from his corpse.

Losing Tevis had been hard. For Cayde and Shiro, they were already numbed to losing Guardians but it still ripped a hole in their already fractured group. For Alix, it was the first time she had lost a Guardian so close to her and it was a horrible reminder of how fragile they could be, even with their Ghosts.

They found a new normal. Shiro ran, heading to Felwinter Peak to help Lord Saladin. He always made time for his own pack though. How could he not, after all they'd been through?

Alix fought, because what else could she do? She dispatched the Vex that killed her friend then carried his body out of the Black Garden, bringing him home for the final time. There was no time for true mourning, with the Taken threat bearing down on them all. They made a pact - after everything settled, they would meet in his honour. They owed him that much.

Cayde was left behind in the Tower. He was still cracking jokes but his Fireteam noticed a change in him. When he thought no-one was looking, he turned sombre, speaking quietly with Sundance or just staring into space. They let him think they didn't notice but Ikora and Zavala both kept a closer eye on him, shaking him out of his thoughts every so often with boring Vanguard business. They received no thanks, but it was thanks enough to hear his whining about the factions and the latest armoury stock check.

Slowly but surely, they healed. Shiro started coming back to the Tower more often. Alix carried on fighting but it wasn't for the sake of vengeance anymore; it was for the living, not the dead. And Cayde fell back into his usual rhythm, laughing and joking and watching over his Hunters with a secretive eye, never letting them see how much he cared. Nothing was the same, but they found a new normal.

Then Cayde died.

Turns out, Cayde was the glue that held everything together. The Vanguard was the first to fall apart. Alix could still hear the gasp of shock from Ikora and feel the saddened gaze of Zavala on her back as she carried his body off her ship. In the aftermath, the path the remaining Vanguard wanted to follow was split. Ikora wanted revenge; she wanted to burn his killers to the ground and dance in the flames. Alix could understand that desire. Zavala was trying to be more logical but Alix could see his position was based in fear; fear of losing more ground to their enemies, fear of losing more friends. Alix took the problem out of their hands. Uldren and the barons were her fight. No more Guardians would fall to them, and her revenge was just extra reward.

Shiro was deep in the wilds when it happened and Alix couldn't bear to just send a message to tell him their world would never be the same. He knew something was wrong when she found him on his mission and when she told him, he was glad she came to him; he may well have gotten himself killed, out there alone and distracted by grief.

The Hunters were in disarray. They came from far and wide to pay their respects and Alix saw more Hunters in those first few days than she had in the years she'd been a Guardian. After that, they fled to the winds. Alix fielded a lot of anxious calls in the months after Cayde's death, from worried Titans and Warlocks - their Hunter teammates vanished without a word, or were being more reckless than ever, or the opposite, taking a care never seen in your average Hunter. She reassured them all; this was how Hunters grieved. They had a lot to grieve.

Alix stood tall, a port in the storm, a shelter for the souls currently afloat with nowhere to turn. There were so many people relying on her; she didn’t get the release of falling apart. Zavala and Ikora still needed a Hunter’s input, and who knew Cayde’s work better than his right hand? The Hunters still needed a guide, and who knew the Hunter’s life better than one of their own, one who had been a Kinderguardian in the not so distant past?  
There were very few people who saw how Alix truly felt. Fen and Eliss were by her side within hours, despite both of them being on patrol on Mars and Io respectively. Her Fireteam were her family and they knew what Cayde meant to her; what both of them meant to her. Cayde was the one being remembered, but Alix mourned his little Sundance too. Traveller, she longed to hear that little voice just once more. The Ghost was always so happy to see her, instantly at her side the moment she got back from a mission. Cayde would pout and whine but he loved that his Ghost loved his partner as much as he did.  
Her Fireteam loved her, but they had their orders and they didn’t involve following her to the Tangled Shore. She reassured them with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and sent them on their way, loneliness wrapping round her like the cloak she had taken from Cayde’s body. Cayde had worn that cloak to honour Andal’s legacy. The thing not many people knew was he wore that cloak for another reason as well. Guilt was as much an influence as love. Now Alix knew exactly how he’d felt when he took that cloak from his lover’s body.

Her Ghost, as usual, turned out to be her saviour. He was the light in the dark, grounding her in reality and never letting her lose herself to revenge and grief. The Barons had to be taken down, he understood that but he would not lose her to this fight too. She wouldn’t stop until either the Barons were dead or she was and Nox would never let that happen. So he stayed by her side, even though the look in her eyes made him want to transmat her back to their ship and not stop until they were safe back at home. All he could do was heal her wounds and offer her advice and hope that there would be something left of her to save once this was all over.

The pack was down to two and those two were at their breaking point. At least they had each other. Once the Dreaming City had been stabilised, Alix came home and so did Shiro. They did as Cayde once had, slipping into the shoes of their dead friend and trying to hold everything together. Shiro co-ordinated Hunter patrols from his new base in the Cosmodrome, keeping an eye on the Fallen there in case they tried anything with the remnants of SIVA that were almost certainly there. After all, he still had a job with the Iron Lords, but he couldn’t let Alix take on everything Cayde left behind. They were a pack, even if it was only a pack of two. After all their losses, he would hold onto Alix with everything he had.

Alix stepped up to the plate in a way that was both expected and not. She never wanted the Vanguard position; saw what it did to Cayde and wanted no part of it. She was a Hunter, made for the wilds. But she took the job and made it her own. She didn’t need to be in the Tower to support the Hunters. In fact, it worked better for everyone that she wasn’t. The Vanguard needed eyes on the ground that they could trust, and Alix needed the freedom of the Solar System. She took the shattered pieces she was given and made them work. Before this, she was a hero. Now? Now she was a pillar of strength against the Darkness.

Cayde would be proud of her, that’s what people kept telling her. She let herself believe them, even though she wasn’t so sure. Believing any different would be the end of her and too much depended on her for that. She would stand tall, and repeat the first words her Ghost said to her like a mantra on a loop, round and round her head.

_Eyes up, Guardian_


End file.
